


Cold Hands, Warm Heart

by aban_asaara



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Modern Thedas, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Before the holiday spirit wears off, here are three fluffy Christmas-themed vignettes that I wrote, each taking place during the Satinalia party that Fenris and Hawke throw at the estate. :D





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apocalisse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apocalisse/gifts), [hollyand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyand/gifts), [BlondePomeranian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian/gifts).



> ... I realised halfway through that Satinalia is in no way the Thedosian equivalent of Christmas (oops!), but I'm leaving it as is anyway! Please let me know what you think, and you can always find me on [tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/)! I hope you enjoy these and wish you the best for the coming year! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A rather loose take on the prompt for Apocalisse, who asked for, “I can’t believe you’re not gonna be home for Christmas.”

Her new dress has a scalloped hem and ribbons stitched on the sleeves, just like her favorite princess, Ser Aveline, wears in the movie. She twirls like a ballerina just to watch the skirt poof up around her legs, but the living room keeps spinning even after she stops. “Careful, pup,” Papa says, steadying her before scritching her face with his beard. The fireplace burns orange and warm, and the house smells of baked apples and slightly burnt ham. Papa had to do all the cooking alone this year because the kitchen is too small and Mama’s belly keeps getting in the way.

When the twins are born, they’ll keep each other awake and catch Santa putting presents under the tree.

“How much are you giving her?” Mother chides when she catches Father handing her a mug, a pod of star anise bobbing in the steaming, fragrant wine. “Malcolm, she’s _fifteen_.”

“Exactly, Leandra. Would you rather she gets drunk with the boys down in the village while our backs are turned?”

She pokes one of the oranges Father brought back from the market with a toothpick, otherwise the cloves keep slipping off the rind when Bethany tries to push them in with her tiny fingers. Carver sits cross-armed on the couch, kicking the air because the label on the biggest present under the tree reads the name of his twin. Mother hums _The Twelve Days of Satinalia_ while wrapping presents; Father is grousing under his breath, screwing and unscrewing the bulbs on a string of lights to find the one that burned out. The puppy hobbles across the room, ears still folded, one paw stuck in the red ribbon tied around his neck.

The pads of her thumbs are sore; her hands smell of citrus and spices all night.

Bethany shrieks. Maker’s Bark bounds away from the tree just as it tips over in the exact way a Satinalia tree _shouldn’t_ , then crashes to the floor in a shatter of ornaments and glittering dust. Carver doubles over, roaring with laughter, while Mother brandishes the broom at the hound and chases him outside the house.

“That one!” she announces, pointing to the scrawniest tree in the spruce thicket. It’s even colder outside Lothering, the air fragrant with the scent of pine resin and fresh-fallen snow.

Father grins and hands her the axe. “Always going for the underdog, eh?”

They sing along to _Harold the Red-nosed Halla_ on the way home, the scrawny spruce tree strapped to the car roof. Snowflakes stick to Father’s beard, and Mother squeals when he kisses her under the sprig of mistletoe that hangs from the doorframe.

A gust of wintry wind blows into the room as the door swings shut. Hawke shivers.

Someone says her name; between one heartbeat and the next, the living room of the Lothering farmhouse melts into the high-ceilinged parlor of the Kirkwall estate she inherited. Fenris is bent over her, eyes bright green under the furrow of his brow. His silver hair sticks in snow-wet strands and smells like the heart of winter. “Are you alright? You—were crying in your sleep.”

“Was I?” Sure enough, her knuckles come away wet with tears when she rubs her eyes. She only meant to lie down on the couch for a moment after shoving the glazed ham in the oven, but she must’ve dozed off. “I was dreaming about that time in Lothering when Maker’s Bark knocked down the entire Satinalia tree,” she explains, managing a smile as she pushes herself up and scoots over.

Fenris sits down next to her. “It must have been nicer than this one, then,” he says with a nod towards the tree in the corner of the living room. Its scraggly branches are drooping under the weight of the pomanders she roped him into making.

Laughter trickles through the squeeze of her throat. “You have no idea. Carver picked it that year. You know him: always compensating for something. Biggest, tallest damned tree you’ve ever seen.”

Her breath hitches. Fenris says nothing, but pulls her against himself and holds her there, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head when she starts sniffling into the crook of his shoulder. “Maker, I’m sorry,” she chuckles after a moment, wiping her tears on the twill-plaid flannel of his shirt.

“Don’t be.” He brushes her cheek with his thumb, his gaze just as soft as his touch. “I’m here for you, Hawke.”

She smiles at him, heart close to bursting, then blinks. “Did you find it?”

He produces a spice jar and gives it a shake, flower-shaped pods clinking against the glass. “Last jar in the store, too,” he says, hooking one corner of his mouth when she throws her arms around his neck. “Let’s mull that wine before everyone gets here.”

She presses a kiss to the square of his jaw just to keep him there a little while longer. He doesn’t seem to mind too much, if the way he tilts his mouth against hers is any indication. “What did I do to deserve you?” she asks between two kisses.

He smirks, the tip of his nose still cold against hers. “I ask myself the same question every day.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hollyand asked for “Last Christmas, you broke my heart, but I’m still not over you” for Carver/Merrill, and I couldn’t resist a bit of FenHawke in the background!

“The mulled wine smells really nice, doesn’t it?” Merrill says, throwing a handful of dried cranberries into the hearth-cake dough. She’s wearing a headband with rattan halla antlers and a hand-knit sweater, now powdered with a layer of sifted flour. “Hawke said it was your father’s recipe.” **  
**

Carver shrugs as he stirs the mulled wine. The cinnamon sticks and vanilla pods swirl in the saucepan, the flesh of the orange slices purpling. “If ‘throw the spice mix into cheap wine and simmer it’ counts as a recipe, then yes.”

“Oh.” Milk splashes on the table as she dribbles some into the dough. “Still, it’s quite different from the version I grew up with. We’d just use the same spices as for the hearth cakes: ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, so no anise or orange peel, with honey or maybe some puréed dates or even a chopped apple and—sorry,” she says with one of those thrice-damned giggles of hers that just make him want to sweep her off her feet and kiss her. “I’m rambling.”

“You are,” he concurs, more harshly than he intended, regretting the words the instant they’re out of his mouth.

She laughs again, but it’s a little strained this time. “That—that wasn’t very nice, now, was it?”

“You said it first,” he retorts. Maker damn it, why can’t he just apologise instead?

“I did, yes. Sorry. I’ll just shut up now.” And she does, kneading in perfect silence before flouring the tabletop—and it’s worse, of course it’s worse, with that silence thick as the dough between them, only filled with the rustle of the wine simmering on the stove and the slow back-and-forth of the rolling pin.

Carver throws an agonizing look towards the doorway, hoping to see his sister return. Void, he’d even take Fenris’s scathing remarks if it meant a distraction.

How long does it take to set up a bloody trivet, anyway?

Just his damn luck. Taken hostage by the mulled wine, doomed to watch it simmer while Fenris and his sister are busy getting everything ready to bake the hearth cakes … and only then does it occur to him that it must’ve all been on purpose. Of _course_ his sister would invite only Merrill and him early, then find a way to leave them alone together in the same room. Minding everyone else’s business is just what she does, romantic, meddling fool that she is.

But Carver feels, oddly, most betrayed by Fenris. Not that there’s much in the way of friendship between them for Fenris to betray—and maybe this is what makes it doubly frustrating: that Fenris— _Fenris_ , with his bloody puppy eyes and his bloody flannel shirt and his bloody rolled-up sleeves—now thinks himself happy enough to meddle into other people’s affairs. And why wouldn’t he be? The way his sister is glowing, she probably expects a marriage proposal before the night is over (now wouldn’t _that_ be mortifying?), or she’s expecting, period, and—

And why _does_ that bother him?

Bloody mulled wine. Bloody hearth cakes. Bloody Satinalia.

“So,” Merrill starts, staring down at her rolling pin, “will you ever tell me why you’re angry with me, or are we just never talking to each other again?”

“I’m not angry with you,” Carver mutters.

Her eyes snap up from the dough. “No? Your face just fell the instant I walked in here, and you’ve been a grump since!” Her rattan antlers shake as she continues flattening the dough with more force than necessary. “Creators, and to think that I used to believe that—that there was _something_ between us, but clearly that was all in my head, and—”

“Then why’d you go and kiss Isabela last Satinalia, then?” he snaps.

He remembers it well: Merrill’s cheeks as red as the berries hanging above her head, laughing and breathless after the other woman had practically licked her way into her mouth while everyone else ogled, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

Merrill blinks at him. “Bela spent the entire night under the mistletoe! She kissed _everyone_.”

He scoffs. “Not me!”

“So you’re angry with me because I kissed Isabela and you didn’t?”

The electric guitar and jingle bells from ZITHER!’s Satinalia album start streaming from the living room speakers, and Carver lets out a bitter laugh. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse. “ _No_ —and I said I wasn’t _angry_ —it’s just that …” He sighs. Might as well just say it: it’s not like he could have any _less_ of a chance with her at this point, anyway. “Isabela got a kiss with tongue and everything, and I got a peck on the cheek.”

For a moment Merrill is quiet, cutting out snowmen and trees into the dough, then placing them onto the iron griddle. “Isabela didn’t kiss you because she agreed not to,” she confesses in an undertone, “and I know it wasn’t my place at all to ask but I just … I didn’t want to stand up against her of all people, you know?” Carver blinks, then looks up from the saucepan. Merrill is flattening the leftover dough with her rolling pin to cut out new shapes. “And I kissed you on the cheek because—because I didn’t know if you’d even _want_ me to kiss you, and then you gave me the cold shoulder for an entire year after that, so it seemed an awful lot like I was right to wonder.”

She clasps the handle of her griddle and starts towards the doorway. Carver tosses his wooden spoon on the stovetop. “Merrill,” he starts as he goes after her, “wait.” Her eyes drop to the griddleful of hearth cakes when he catches her by the shoulder. “Listen, I—I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions, and—Maker, I’m an arse, aren’t I?”

“Quite,” she chuckles.

He clears his throat, the back of his neck burning. “Well, for the record, I wouldn’t have minded a proper kiss. Still wouldn’t, in fact.” Merrill looks up at him, eyes wide but opaque for all that they glimmer in the string lights. He runs a nervous hand through his hair. “If it’s not too late.”

She tilts her head. “But it’s still early.”

“I meant—if I haven’t ruined my chances with you.”

Movement catches his eye. From behind the second-story banister, his sister is pointing to something right above their heads. She thrusts a thumb up at him before disappearing out of sight when Fenris lifts her by the waist and removes her from her hiding spot.

A new sprig of mistletoe is hanging from the same spot as last year. Merrill’s gaze flits upwards, following his, and her lips stretch into a smile that sets her green eyes aglow. “Only if we get to kiss when we’re not under the mistletoe, too.”

Carver grins. “I think I’d like that,” he replies, bending down to meet her lips as she rises up on tiptoes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BlondePomeranian prompted me with, "'You need to sleep or Santa won't come,' said Fenris"—and this is what I could come up with. :D

Never one for tradition, Hawke—except when it suits her, and as Fenris learns the hard way, Satinalia is one of those times.

“It’s tradition, Fen!” she exclaimed, scandalised at his suggestion that the handing of gifts should take place after dinner. “Santa always leaves the presents under the tree when the children are asleep!”

No children here, though, only adults at various stages of inebriation. Not that this would have stopped her, had she not dozed off soon after midnight, snoring into his ear and drooling into the crook of his shoulder, her stomach tight with glazed ham and hearth cakes.

Which leaves Fenris as the designated Satinalia elf.

He snorts to himself, glancing at her sleeping form next to him on the bed. Hawke would laugh so hard at that her jaw would come unhinged.

It falls to him to uphold tradition, then. Donnic and Aveline thwart his first attempt: they linger in the kitchen, closing bottles of wine and putting leftovers away while stealing kisses from each other like newlyweds—appropriately enough. “You’re hovering, elf,” Varric points out, smirking over a mug of hot cocoa that smells of rum even from a few paces away, when Fenris tries again some time later. “Hawke taking up all the bedspace after inhaling all that food?” And yet later, Fenris ends up nose to nose with Isabela as she sneaks out of the kitchen with a slice of chocolate log and a can of whipped cream, wearing nothing but a grin and a bedsheet.

He gives up after that. Instead he settles in bed with his phone and reads the _Hard in Hightown_ Satinalia special, alternating between petting Hawke’s hair and Maker’s Bark as they snuggle up to him in their sleep. By the time Donnen reveals who poisoned the Satinalia punch, the digital clock on the bedside table reads 3:47. Fenris stretches, satisfied with himself for having figured out the killer, then pokes his head through the door again. Beyond the banister, the tiles gleam with the string lights decorating the tree they bought from the Hightown market. Needles already litter the floor at its foot, but there’s something comforting in the fresh, winter-forest scent that blows from it each time the front door swings open. Headlights sweep the room, illuminating the frosted windows for an instant before the parlour drops again into shadow.

The room is empty—save for Merrill and Carver sleeping on the couch, her ear pressed against his chest. _Venhedis_ , Fenris thinks. Of course this couldn’t just be easy. He tiptoes down the stairs with the first few presents balanced on top of each other. The steps creak and groan under his feet despite his best efforts, but Carver and Merrill do not stir, even as he glides past them. First under the tree is the large hat box with Isabela’s gaudy feathered cavalier, followed by a leather-bound notebook and fountain pen for Varric, and an assorted set of potted plants for Merrill. Then come Hawke’s attempt at hand-knit socks for her brother, the ridiculous set of cat-shaped slippers that she insisted on buying for Anders, and a box Fenris hadn’t noticed before, with his own name penned in her squiggly handwriting on the label hanging from the ribbon. Curious, he gives it a tentative shake as he starts down the stairs.

Anders’s gift box slips out of his grasp, connects with his foot as he takes a step forward, and flies down the stairs to land at the bottom with a thud.

Fenris holds his breath, waiting.

Merrill’s disheveled head pops up from behind the backrest. Her heavy-lidded gaze sweeps the room but somehow misses both the present, sitting in the middle of the floor, and Fenris, crouched behind the banister. Carver mumbles something, and she snuggles back against him.

After a few long minutes, her breathing deepens and evens out again. Thighs burning from all the crouching, Fenris sneaks down the stairs, shoves the gifts under the tree, then tiptoes back to the master bedroom. His own present for Hawke does not belong under the tree, he decides, so it remains in the drawer, which leaves the espresso machine Aveline and Donnic wanted, the books for Sebastian (who skipped the party but will be there for brunch, when and if everyone has dragged themselves out of bed), and Maker’s Bark’s jumbo-sized box of double-baked Mabari Crunch—

A soft whine breaks the silence. Fenris whirls around, slipping the presents back into the closet, and closes the door behind himself. Maker’s Bark looks at him with an inquisitive tilt of his massive head, then jumps off the bed, claws clicking against the slats of the hardwood floor. The mabari starts nosing and sniffing at his hands. “Nothing,” Fenris says, turning his empty palms over before crouching to rub the hound’s jowls. Far from convinced, though, Maker’s Bark scratches at the closet door and lets out another pitiful whine when Fenris waggles his finger at him. “None of that. What do you even think is in there?”

“ _Arf!_ ” says Maker’s Bark, his stump of a tail wagging excitedly. He pads towards the rolls of wrapping paper still balanced against the wall, bumps them with his nose, then lets his big, wet tongue loll out of his mouth, staring up at Fenris expectantly.

 _If these hounds had opposable thumbs, they’d have taken Ferelden over long ago._ “Santa is the one bringing the gifts,” he explains as he pats the hound on the head, “but he won’t come until everyone is fast asleep.”

Another soft whine, then Maker’s Bark bites Fenris’s sleeve and pulls him towards the closet again. “I told you already,” Fenris says, gently tugging the fabric out from between his teeth. “Santa will only bring the gifts once everyone is asleep, so you need to go back to bed. Then you will have your presents when you wake up in the morning.”

Maker’s Bark considers him for a moment, then grips his sleeve again—to drag him back to bed this time. “Oh, uh. Wait,” Fenris stutters as the hound nudges and tugs at him. “I can’t go to sleep just yet. _Hawke_ ,” he grits between his teeth when the mabari jumps onto the bed and starts pulling at his shirt, forcing him to follow.

Hawke stirs, then pats the mattress blindly. “Come on, boy,” she mutters. “Fen just needs to put the gifts under the tree.”

Fenris sighs. Maker’s Bark perks his ears up at him and wags his tail even more enthusiastically. “Fine. You’re getting _one_ gift before bed, but the rest has to wait until morning.”

“ _Ruff!_ ” Maker’s Bark agrees, jumping off the bed to gnaw at the chew toy Fenris unwraps for him. The hound still has it clutched between his front paws by the time Fenris returns after putting the last few presents under the tree. The drool on his shirt still glimmers in the soft, pale light that streams through the curtains, so he changes out of his clothes before slipping into bed.

The covers are warm with Hawke’s body heat, and the pillow smells of cinnamon and cloves, somehow. “Mm,” she says when Fenris draws her close and drops a kiss into her hair. “Best gift ever.”


End file.
